A viral video app you've probably never heard of

By Business Insider US | 06 Nov 2018 at 21:18hrs
Instagram/jacobsartorius
TikTok - an app you may have never heard of before - was the most downloaded app in the US in September, according to a TechCrunch report on Friday using data from SensorTower.

For the first time in the US, TikTok had more downloads than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in a given month.

TikTok had 3.81 million downloads from the iOS App Store and Google Play combined in September. Facebook had the second highest download count at 3.53 million first-time installs, according to the TechCrunch report.

Today, TikTok is the 4th ranked social app in the App Store's Top Charts, behind top-ranked YouTube, 2nd ranked Instagram, and 3rd place Snapchat.

So what is TikTok?

It's sort of like Vine, the viral video creation app that Twitter acquired and later killed. TikTok is a social platform popular amongst teens made-up of short videos that often play catchy songs in the background.

On a recent meander through the app, I watched a US Marine do one-handed pull-ups to Panic! At The Disco's "High Hopes," a woman singing a John Legend's "All of Me" to her bag of Hot Cheetos, and so much more.

You'll quickly find how addicting TikTok can be.

TikTok is owned by the same Beijing-based parent company that bought social video app Musical.ly for $1 billion last year.

Musical.ly, which had 60 million users at the time of its acquisition, was folded into the TikTok app to help it gain traction in the US.

With TikTok number one downloaded social app in September, that strategy seems to be working quite well.

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